


Landslide

by 221b_hound



Series: Guitar Man [45]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic, Sappy, the nature of love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-07
Packaged: 2017-12-10 16:10:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/787944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Apparently I'm in a soppy mood.</p><p>Sherlock has the care of the infant Ford for the night, which leads him to reflections on the nature of love. For a man who talks so much, he never has the right words. But maybe they're not necessary after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Landslide

It wasn’t until after Violet and Sherrinford were born that Sherlock really understood the nature of his love for John Watson.

He was rubbish at articulating it, of course. He always had been. The words that talked about feelings were so imprecise. They couldn’t be dissected and laid out; they were so full of nuance and complexity and could be misinterpreted in so many ways. From childhood on, his attempts to describe his feelings to his own satisfaction had failed so spectacularly that it soon became evident (to that young boy at least) that perhaps he was doing it wrong. That he didn’t feel like other people felt. Maybe he didn’t really feel properly at all. Maybe he only thought he did.

It was certainly easier, after the age of seven, to pretend he didn’t feel things. He’d rather hoped that eventually it would become true. Feelings caused him nothing but trouble and confusion and pain.

Then there was John, who never demanded explanations. They just… were. The two of them, together, and what they did, and how it made them laugh, or fight, or just sit in companionable silence. It was just _easy_.

Sherlock used to wonder about how he felt about John. He wondered if it was love, and if it was love, did that mean he was _in_ love with John? Did that mean he wanted to be _romantically_ involved, or that he wanted John’s body? Sherlock was certainly possessive but it never seemed to be about sex. He wanted closeness but not orgasms. Not with John, at any rate. Perhaps, briefly, with Irene, but she wasn’t half as clever as she thought she was and that had soon passed.  From time to time his body responded to the idea of particularly brilliant people he’d met or read about. He found some _ideas_ sexually stimulating, less often _people_ , but it was rare, so it rarely bothered him.

But when Violet was born, Sherlock began to understand that you could love someone deeply and overwhelmingly and have it be nothing to do with romance or desire. When Sherrinford was born, a new instance of that small sample group, his understanding of unconditional love became permanently embedded.

_John is part of me, despite the lack of shared DNA. He is family._

Sherlock thought about that, because it wasn’t quite right yet. Yes, John was like family, but not _precisely_ family. What John was to him shifted. He was parent/sibling/child/friend/equal, but not those things. Or, not _only_ those things.

Sherlock looked at Ford sleeping in his cot: the boy’s first sleepover with his donor father while Sally and Mycroft had a quiet evening together. Sherlock, suddenly overcome with the knowledge that he would protect this child with his life, for all of Ford’s life, thought about the nature of love some more.

_I don’t protect John in the same way. In some ways, yes. The Year in Hell was all about that. But I’m as likely to drag John towards danger as shield him from it. He came into my life, and I could see he needed something. So I shared what I had with him._

Ah. There was something. _Sharing._ Sherlock had always been quite bad at that. Sharing his thoughts. Sharing his hurts and fears. He’d been generous enough as a child with his property, but nobody before had ever wanted the other things he had to give, so he learned to keep all of it to himself: property, thoughts, feelings.

And then came John, who asked for those things (not demanded, but asked, quietly, wordlessly, patiently) and finally Sherlock had shared them, and each shared thing had been accepted and then reciprocated. Someone _finally_ wanted what Sherlock had to offer, and then offered him something precious in return.

Sherlock ran a forefinger gently over the sleeping baby’s hand. Reflexively, the child’s fingers moved and then curled, softly, around Sherlock’s finger.

 _John_ , Sherlock realised, _made me believe that I could be… that I **was** … human. When I had long decided that I was not._

And on the trail of this came the second realisation.

_He made me **glad** to be human, when I didn’t think I would be. When I thought it would be a disadvantage; when I thought no-one could possibly have a use for anything human in me._

And here he was, Sherlock Holmes, the strange child, who didn’t mean to be destructive but was, the freak, the machine – here he was with a friend, with _friends_ , and a daughter (not of blood but a daughter all the same) and a son (not his to raise, but his son all the same). Here he was, with his brother reclaimed (or in the process of) after a lifetime of alienation, resentment and rage.

Here he was, Sherlock Holmes, with a functioning heart.

Sherlock snorted at himself, at the overt sentiment. Of course his heart functioned.

Hearts pump blood, human bodies do not survive without them (or a reasonable mechanical facsimile thereof).

And _oh_. **Yes**. There it was. Metaphorically, of course, but his heart, which he’d worked so hard to turn into clockwork from the age of eight, his heart had become flesh and remembered how to feel. And he was still pretty rubbish at articulating those things, which for a man full to the brim of words was very irritating.

But then John taught him – or reminded him, rather – that the heart can use other languages to speak. Music and touch. Deeds as well as words.

The urge to scoop Ford up out of the cot and hold him close was almost overwhelming. To kiss his little face as a deed-touch of love; to whisper-sing great sweeping symphonies into those tiny ears so that all this love could communicate itself directly to the child’s own little heart.

But Sherlock had so much love for that baby that he was able to simply stand there, his finger clasped loosely in the child’s fist, and look at him while Ford slept. There was so much love in that stillness between them.

“Hey.” The voice broke softly in on Sherlock’s contemplation of this palpable sensation of love as something living. Sherlock looked at John.

“He’s asleep.”

“Yeah.” John’s sappy grin took in father and child both.

Sherlock rather feared that his own expression was equally sappy, and then he remembered that this was John, who had shown Sherlock his own humanity, and that he didn’t mind John seeing it. It was a gift from John, after all.

“John,” he said, and he meant to follow it with words, he really did, but as always, it was too complex, too nuanced, simply too big, for words to even begin to trace the shape of it, and so the words shriveled in his throat.

But unlike all those people in the past, who heard the silence and assumed Sherlock had nothing to say because he had nothing to feel, John’s smile simply widened, as though he heard all the words anyway. John walked over to stand at his side, to lean against Sherlock’s shoulder and look with him down into the crib.

“He’s got Sally’s eyes but your eyebrows,” said John.

“And somehow he’s ended up with Mycroft’s ears.”

“Poor little bugger.”

They both giggled.

“He’s got your mouth,” John added after a moment, gazing at the tiny cupid’s bow.

“Hopefully not my tongue.” _It’s too sharp for such a soft little mouth._

“Oh, you’re not so bad.” John grinned at him. “It’s something else to hear you letting fly at fifteen to the dozen. I can’t wait to hear the two of you together."

And again, Sherlock wanted to speak, but the words dammed up in his mouth, too many and too few at the same time. He tried anyway. “John.”

And stopped.

John leaned into him, the pressure of his left arm warm along the length of Sherlock’s right.

“I know,” John said, “I know. It’s like… how can you ever say enough, yeah? How can there ever be the right words for how this feels? It’s like someone’s cut a shape out of your soul and made it live outside you, breathing your own breath.”

 _This is why you write the words_ , Sherlock thought.

“I always thought…” John hesitated, but kept his eyes firmly on the sleeping child, “It took me by surprise, when I realised… it felt like you’d given me a bit of your soul; put breath back in me. I didn’t realise that was it for a long time. Not until you had to go away, and it got so hard to breathe.”

 _Yes. Maybe. Yes. Those were good words_. “You… gave me a part of yours too. I took it with me. To keep me breathing.”

The pressure along his arm became firmer. “And then I thought,” continued John softly, “How could I ever feel like this about someone else? But do you know what?”

“What?” breathed Sherlock, with no idea what was coming next.

“Turns out love isn’t finite. My soul is seeded in so many places now, and it never feels less. It always feels _more_.”

At last, John laughed, a little self-deprecatingly. “I’m becoming hideously sentimental. You’ll probably have to give me a stern lecture soon.”

“Perhaps.” Sherlock’s mouth curved in a quiet smile. “Not today, though.”

Ford sighed and moved in his sleep. Sherlock’s thumb stroked his tiny hand with delicate precision.

 _My soul is seeded in so many now_ , Sherlock thought, _in you and Violet and John and… so many others, and John is right. It is more, not less._

And he wanted to say that to John. He wanted to tell him, now that he had what felt like the right words, but when he glanced down at John, John simply leaned closer, resting his head on Sherlock’s shoulder, and gave a contented sigh. So Sherlock dropped his cheek to the top of John’s head, just for a moment, and shared a contented sigh of his own.

It was a language other than words, a language of deeds and touch, and it was enough.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from Fleetwood Mac's Landslide, which is such a beautiful song.


End file.
